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Thursday, April 12, 2007

On my last two annual trips to Guatemala I was able to fit some birding swag into my suitcases (yes, that's suitCASES--plural) to share with birding friends and with folks new to bird watching.

HoughtonMifflin, publisher of many field guides we natural history buffs rely upon, has graciously donated or discounted to me copies of the KaufmanGuíadecampo a las aves deNorteamérica. That's the Kaufman Guide to North American Birds translated into Spanish. It was published in 2005 by HoughtonMifflin.

These Spanish-language guides are incredibly useful to bird watchers in the Latin American tropics because most of the migrant species that spend spring and summer with us in the U.S. and Canada spend their winters to the south of our borders in Central and South America. The existing guides to birds in many Latin American countries cover their own endemic, common, and migrant birdlife. To also include all of "our" birds would result in a book that would not be portable or useful in the field. The Kaufman Guia is perfect for filling this gap. It's got great color photographs, short, descriptive text, and it's in Spanish!

This young man and his father came to a bird walk I was leading in Guatemala. It was the boy's first ever trip outside his village in northern Guatemala. I bet he'll use this guide a lot in coming years.

The 10 copies that accompanied me to Guatemala went into the hands of my friend Claire Dallies who works for the Peace Corps there. Claire has been instrumental in helping a handful of remote villages develop their ecotourism opportunities. Visiting bird watchers do enjoy seeing many of Guatemala's special bird species--birds like the pink-headed warbler, resplendent quetzal, and the horned guan. Claire and others are helping to train the villagers to become birding guides for visiting ecotouristas. And she thought some of the Kaufman guides would go a long way to helping the human guides learn more about their local birds (especially those that spend the winter in Guate).

Ernesto Col, one of the new Guatemalan birding guides, with his new field guide, courtesy of Houghton Mifflin.

Dear Bill:Here is the photo of you with Ernesto Col. He is one of the bird monitors from a monitoring program funded by ProEvalRAxmu that KnutEiserman spoke about.He lives in a small community named Senimtaca, in the Sacranix mountains, west of Coban. He is learning how to be a bird watching guide as well, and is pretty good at identifying the birds from his locality by sound . He will be teaching other people in his community with the book you gave him and the other 2 guides from there who could not come.

Thank you again for your help and support.

Take Care,

claire

Claire Dallies (far right) presented four guides to community members in Candelaria Camposanto.

Later that week, Claire wrote me again:Hello Bill,

I took 4 guides to the area of Chisec, to a good community-based ecotourism project currently named "puertaalmundomaya" (the door to the Maya World).This project includes 5 ecotourism sites in 5 different communities. One of them is the Archaeological site of Cancuen which has recently been excavated by Dr. Arthur Demarest from Vanderbilt University. The other 4 are all community projects with other interests: caves, lagoons, rivers, and all in tropical rainforest. I left 4 books there, one for each community. The only community that I did not want to give a book to was the Cancuen site community because they are not interested in birds.

The gentleman holding standing next to me on the picture is Sebastian Tut, who is a Guatemalan working for Counterpart International, the International NGO that is currently supporting these projects, and the gentleman next to him holding the book is the president of the Tourism Committee at the community of CandelariaCamposanto. All the people standing at the back as local guides trained to guide throught the caves of Candelaria. The young man with a beard on the left is Mark Yoders, the local Peace Corps Volunteer currently working with them as well.

Mark was actually the person who called me and asked me if we could get birding guide books in Spanish for the communities he works with. I ask you based on his request, and we are all very grateful, Bill, that you helped us get the donation of books for them. I am sure that each of those books will be put to good use by them.Miguel Ramirez (at right) is one of the lead local birding guides in the Cerro San Gil regions of Guatemala. He a Kaufman guide to one of the local community members who is very interested in birds.

Whenever you get a chance to come back to Guatemala, maybe on your own, and spend more time discovering some of our beauties, I would gladly take you to some of these places and meet the wonderful local people who are now understanding that ecotourism can represent and IS an additional income for them and a strong incentive for not cutting down the rainforest.

Best regards,

Claire

Thanks to you, Claire, for helping find the best new owners for these guides.

Dear readers of BOTB, the next time you visit Latin America--or if you know a Spanish-speaking person in your community or school who is interested in birds---consider giving the gift of birds in the form of this excellent field guide.

I agree with Dawn and am glad to see that you will keep us posted. As I am great at delegating(!), I am wondering if you can put a PayPal button on your site so when you have these worthwhile projects, we might easily pitch in! (Of course, I know not of which I ask, because I am not a computer sort of person, not a blogger, not . . . a lot of things, but lookout - I am a reader and I enjoy watching the birds, although I am nothing resembling well-versed, doncha' know.)

Hi Bill,I'm grateful to you for getting the Guia de Campo distributed in this way. Getting it translated and published was an expensive labor of love on my part -- at last count, it has cost me almost $40,000 -- and so far I haven't received a penny for any of the copies sold, so I know I can never break even on the project. But the important thing was not to make money, but to make a difference. Readers who can't take copies of the book off to the tropics themselves might want to know of a program run by the Black Swamp Bird Observatory, along with the Sonoran Joint Venture and other partners, which has now distributed hundreds of copies of the Spanish bird guide in northern Mexico and and the southern USA. The book retails for $18.95, but for just $12 you can have a copy donated and sent to people who can make good use of it, and a nameplate in the front will identify you as the donor (unless you wish to make the donation anonymously). Details are on the web site of the Black Swamp Bird Observatory (www.bsbobird.org). But once again, Bill, thanks very much for making the book available to those fine people in Guatemala, and I hope it will increase their enjoyment of bird watching!

Kenn Kaufman(author of the Kaufman Guia de Campo a las Aves de Norteamerica)

About Bill

Bill of the Birds

Bill Thompson III is the editor of Bird Watcher's Digest by day. He's also a keen birder, the author of many books, a dad, a field trip leader, an ecotourism consultant, a guitar player, the host of the "This Birding Life" podcast, a regular speaker/performer on the birding festival circuit, a gentleman farmer, and a fungi to be around. His North American life list is somewhere between 673 and 675. His favorite bird is the red-headed woodpecker. His "spark bird" was a snowy owl. He has watched birds in 25 countries and 44 states. But his favorite place to watch birds is on the 80-acre farm he shares with his wife, artist/writer Julie Zickefoose. Some kind person once called Bill "The Pied Piper of Birding" and he has been trying to live up to that moniker ever since.